Steven Schwab knows precisely when he saw the dog with the bloody paws wandering his neighborhood, stopping before each house to howl and bark.
" `The Dick Van Dyke Show' runs from 10 to 10:30, and I would walk my dog from 10:30 to 11 and . . . come home and watch `The Mary Tyler Moore Show,' " Schwab testified Wednesday in O.J. Simpson's murder trial, describing his unvarying Sunday routine.During his walk, he said, he checked his watch. It was 10:55 when he saw a white-and-tan dog on the loose outside a condo.
As he approached the animal, he noticed blood on its paws and thought it might be hurt. As he headed home, he said, the dog followed and "would howl at every house we passed. It would stop and bark down the path."
With no eyewitnesses to the June 12 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, and a coroner unable to determine the time of death, prosecutors are trying to use the wails of Nicole Simpson's Akita to fix a time for the killings.
As Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. tried to show that witnesses who testified Wednesday were only approximating the times that they heard the dog, some admitted that might be the case. But not Schwab.
When he returned home, he said, his wife was watching TV, and it was precisely 11:05 p.m. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" had just begun - the episode in which Mary dates someone from a competing TV station, he said.
Prosecutors contend Simpson committed the slayings at 10:15 p.m., giving him enough time to get back to his house two miles away, clean himself up and catch a limousine for the airport about 11 p.m.
The defense says Simpson was alone in his yard at the time, practicing his golf swing.
Other developments:
- Superior Court Judge Lance Ito ruled that Simpson's first wife, Marquerite Simpson Thomas, must testify. Prosecutor Cheri Lewis said Thomas had two telephone conversations with Simpson the day of his arrest, including one during the Ford Bronco chase. She also said prosecutors are interested in an allegation of violence during Thomas' marriage to Simpson.
Thomas has told police that Simpson called her the day he was to surrender and said he had been framed and was going to commit suicide.
- Mary Anne Gerchas, who says she saw four men leaving the area around the crime scene the night of the murders, was arrested on suspicion of failing to pay a $23,000 hotel bill.